Documents can contain text in multiple languages, where the text in different languages flow in different directions. For example, a document can contain both English and Hebrew. English is considered a left-to-right (LTR) language in that its characters flow from left to right when rendered/read. Other LTR languages include Hindi, French, and Japanese. Hebrew is considered a right-to-left language (RTL) since its characters flow from right to left when rendered/read. Urdu is another example of a RTL language.
In a bi-directional document, a document that contains both LTR and RTL characters, the direction of text at an insertion point ideally is communicated to a user. When editing a bi-directional document, a user may frequently switch between LTR and RTL sections of the document. Past examples of indicating the text flow at an insertion point have included providing an indication of the current language in a taskbar and having a caret at the top of the text cursor. The carets can be undesired and distracting to some users. Providing an indication of the current language in a taskbar requires the user to know the text direction of the language and causes the user to move focus from the document to the taskbar. In addition, in some modes, such as full screen, the taskbar can be hidden.